UAVs and drones

[jlh]

In a single player scenario, if I were to give the red forces fire support artillery etc and a UAV , plotting a route for the UAV, would the red AI use the UAV to call in fire missions on blue forces?

In 4.3 will  AI red forces use the new Swingblade, and Dragonfly systems in single player scenarios if so equipped.

Thanks

[Mirzayev]

8 minutes ago, jlh said:

In a single player scenario, if I were to give the red forces fire support artillery etc and a UAV , plotting a route for the UAV, would the red AI use the UAV to call in fire missions on blue forces?

In 4.3 will  AI red forces use the new Swingblade, and Dragonfly systems in single player scenarios if so equipped.

Thanks

 

 

I can't answer for 4.3.

 

As of now with the UAV, the answer is "no."

 

The UAV does not plot contacts on the map, so the AI cannot "see" them.

[Ssnake]

At this stage, the answer is "No, but...". With subsequent updates, the answer will change to "Yes, but..."

 

Most of the new UAVs and all of the old UAVs are man-in-the-loop controlled. They require a human operator for observation. They are, essentially, remotely piloted, flying, dumb sensor packages, possibly combined with effectors like a laser illuminator and guided bombs or missiles.

As a consequence and as a conscious design decision we did not want a magic eye in the sky that can in seconds discover and report everything because that's not how these systems work. You either have a good magnification that allows identification, but a very narrow field of view which dramatically reduces your detection chances. Or a wider field of view that is good for general overview and situational awareness, but then you can't really identify what you're dealing with.

 

I believe that this is going to change, eventually. I believe that more and more UAVs will come with some form of image recognition and the ability to report approximate locations as long as the electronic warfare environment will be benign (an assumption that is in itself questionable). These systems will have a limited ID range and a limited field of view, but if and when they more or less directly overfly a target they will probably report what they see in an automatic fashion. However, even in the best of cases these sightings, if fed into a battlefield management system, would have to be treated as "unconfirmed sightings" because the image recognition may be able to find the shape of a T-72, but it might not be able to sense a decoy or an old wreck from a live tank, and even if it can, its ability to differentiate between a neutral, friendly, or hostile T-72 will be limited in the best of cases, or nonexistant.

 

Version 4.3 will have a limited robotic surveillance capability that will work for designated areas, but not in a completely autonomous fashion, and you couldn't program a flight path, and it requires "the science-fiction" UAV (a system that is still in development, and then with a generous extrapolation from our end). We want to give the Mission Designers the ability to try out something with it, but without completely wrecking the existing game, so to speak.

[imdancin]

On 7/6/2022 at 11:47 PM, Ssnake said:

At this stage, the answer is "No, but...". With subsequent updates, the answer will change to "Yes, but..."

 

Most of the new UAVs and all of the old UAVs are man-in-the-loop controlled. They require a human operator for observation. They are, essentially, remotely piloted, flying, dumb sensor packages, possibly combined with effectors like a laser illuminator and guided bombs or missiles.

As a consequence and as a conscious design decision we did not want a magic eye in the sky that can in seconds discover and report everything because that's not how these systems work. You either have a good magnification that allows identification, but a very narrow field of view which dramatically reduces your detection chances. Or a wider field of view that is good for general overview and situational awareness, but then you can't really identify what you're dealing with.

 

I believe that this is going to change, eventually. I believe that more and more UAVs will come with some form of image recognition and the ability to report approximate locations as long as the electronic warfare environment will be benign (an assumption that is in itself questionable). These systems will have a limited ID range and a limited field of view, but if and when they more or less directly overfly a target they will probably report what they see in an automatic fashion. However, even in the best of cases these sightings, if fed into a battlefield management system, would have to be treated as "unconfirmed sightings" because the image recognition may be able to find the shape of a T-72, but it might not be able to sense a decoy or an old wreck from a live tank, and even if it can, its ability to differentiate between a neutral, friendly, or hostile T-72 will be limited in the best of cases, or nonexistant.

 

Version 4.3 will have a limited robotic surveillance capability that will work for designated areas, but not in a completely autonomous fashion, and you couldn't program a flight path, and it requires "the science-fiction" UAV (a system that is still in development, and then with a generous extrapolation from our end). We want to give the Mission Designers the ability to try out something with it, but without completely wrecking the existing game, so to speak.

Sorry know this topic is a bit old, but what about the use case of simulating an opponent that is using drones for observation and fires spotting?  I have some mission ideas where the opposition has UAV's up to observe and call fires on the players, but right now I would have to join the red team and do all of that myself.  When playing against the AI in a coop mission, there's no way to have an actual man in the loop on the enemy side.  I can fake it by having red UAV's fly over fire missions I set up myself to trigger when players go to certain areas, but it would be cool if the AI could do this on their own. 

[Ssnake]

The question is perfectly legitimate. The answer may, unfortunately, appear to be not quite straightforward.

Up to this point, with the sole exception of the short-ranged and short-lived Sprite, all existing drones represent our military customers' desire to support certain procedures with drones that, effectively, require a man in the loop.

You're asking for autonomous drones that feed intelligence into the OpFor situation map. At the same time, I presume, you do not want them to be unrealistically effective (like, identifying any possible unit to which it has line of sight). Striking a good balance is of supreme importance here so we don't upset the whole apple cart.

 

Now, I also think that the position of our .mil customers with respect to autonomous reconnaissance drones and loitering munitions is about to change. You have to prepare the troops of today for the battlefield of today and of tomorrow, where drones will be a pervasive threat. However, the lessons from the current conflict in Ukraine are multifaceted. It involves, without attempting to be a comprehensive list, at least the following elements, all of which aren't yet adequately represented in Steel Beasts:

- the use of dummies

- the use of camouflage

- the use of decoy troop positions

- air defense against drones

- electronic warfare

- electronic warfare

- more electronic warfare

- electronic reconnaissance

- electronic countermeasures

- electronic counter-countermeasures

 

The next question then is, even if we implemented all this (which we couldn't, at least not on short notice), should we push all these tasks onto the player? At which point will "more complexity is good for gameplay" flip to "too much complexity is bad for gameplay"? And if we automatize all that and the computer is largely busy fighting itself, then what's the point of it?

 

So, we need a balanced solution that doesn't require every player to become proficient with every specialist job our modern armies can offer, that can be selectively automatized or handled by humans if the player so wishes. Oh, and ideally these new features will introduce no new bugs (good luck with that).

 

I hope this explains why, at this stage, limiting drone usage to human players are the best option.

[Lumituisku]

I think that futher developlent of detection system, and adding some more elements to it would be sufficient.

 

• - Use of dummies
  • Wouldn't it be possible to give existing units, option to be a dummy?  Aka..  no value, that wouldn't apply to scoring..  and that perhaps would have burned texture added as default? 
• - the use of camouflage
  • This is find very important. However adding camoflage to all units would take very long time.  With Camoflage though there is the other side "Concealment"  And effective use of shadows during movement. Also...  "leaving track trails.  / destroed vegetation".  What I would love to see to be futher developed on detection system is that players could in future find it rewarding to use shadows / concealment
• - the use of decoy troop positions
  • Isn't this already possible though?  And especially so if we would get dummies?  Isn't it like same thing?

4 hours ago, Ssnake said:

The next question then is, even if we implemented all this (which we couldn't, at least not on short notice), should we push all these tasks onto the player? At which point will "more complexity is good for gameplay" flip to "too much complexity is bad for gameplay"? And if we automatize all that and the computer is largely busy fighting itself, then what's the point of it?

 

I think that it would be beneficial to think players perspective from point of AFV crew view of what they need to train to, and especially of what would be important to rehearse often.  As for electronic warfare, unless Esims is going to implement VOIP, id leave lot of that for users to find out how they implement it.  

 

Thought... VOIP, seems to be a thing that eventually may become necessary.  Im looking at the other services and how things are going and have a chilling feeling that it isn't coincidence that a great many games have VOIP in them.  Before I wondered why to bother to use those, but as things are going, it's actually starting to make more and more sense to use such services build into games.  

[Ssnake]

I don't want to promise too much about integrating some voice option in a future Steel Beasts version. It's certainly doable and desirable - whether the license conditions will be acceptable remains to be seen.

In any case, my list of issues wasn't so much a cry for help to solve these problems for us, as an illustration why this hasn't been done already. It involves more than just dumping an autonomous recce drone into the Mission Editor and call it a day. Not, that anyone suggested that it was that easy, just that we need (and will) consider multiple aspects before implementing things.

[Lumituisku]

I do understand problem with Saurons all seeing eye.  Though...  I wonder could I wish for a test pilot feature for community to see bu trial and error if it could actually be usable to have such autonomyous drone.   Could be like quadcopter or something, with limited mobility and range of view (or ability for scenario maker to decide its range of view). 

 

Then by trial we could actually judge better if it...  would work like that or and what else would be needed to make such um...  developmental feature to work better in future.    

 

Such feature could actually be desirable to scenario makers in some situations.  And it could also help those who control opfor with one to few players in community games.